It’s in the United States’ long-term interest to engage more closely with China, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said today, and his new top officer in the Pacific said he’s looking forward to the role he hopes to play in the dialogue.

Dialog between the two countries, particularly about China’s military modernization efforts, will go a long way toward promoting transparency and “preventing miscalculations,” Gates told a gathering of U.S. and South Korean troops here today.

It also can promote the kind of relationship required for the United States and China to work together to confront mutual security concerns, he said.

Gates cited China’s important role in the six-party talks aimed at getting North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons program. “The Chinese have a similar interest in preventing destabilizing activities in the region as much as any of us,” he said. “Our goal moving forward is to try to encourage China to grow its participation in internationally stabilizing activities.”

Navy Adm. Robert F. Willard, who took the helm at U.S. Pacific Command just two days ago, said welcomes the role he’ll play in promoting more dialogue and engagement with China.

China brought an abrupt halt to that interchange after the United States announced arms sales to Taiwan in October 2008, but slowly is showing interest in reengaging.

Chinese Gen. Xu Caihou, China’s No. 2 military officer, will meet with Gates in Washington next week, but Willard said he wants more lower-level engagement throughout the military ranks as well. He expressed hope that these exchanges will engender trust and help to clear up some of the uncertainty – particularly about China’s military buildup that’s proceeded at “an unprecedented rate.”

The United States isn’t the only country that’s taken notice, he said. “Our regional partners are somewhat uncertain about it,” he said. “And one of my responsibilities is to seek to better the relations and the levels of understanding regarding intentions and regarding that military development.”

Willard said he’d like to use the dialog as a way to “seek areas that we have in common and common interest in.” He noted efforts China already is involved in or might want to contribute toward, including humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, counterpiracy in the Gulf of Aden, counterproliferation, and search-and-rescue and submarine rescue efforts.

Increased dialogue also could help to clear up differences in how the two countries interpret maritime law. It’s caused some close calls when Chinese naval vessels tried to prevent U.S. ships from operating in international waters off its shores.

“[The Chinese] interpret military operations in their exclusive economic zone differently than we do – and differently, frankly, than the majority of countries do globally,” Willard said.

“We are more than happy to sit down and have an adult discussion about our differences,” Willard added, but he also said the United States isn’t about to back down.

“The United States has operated in the maritime domain in this region of the world for 150 years, and we have no intention of doing differently,” he said. “We very much exert our right to operate militarily and with our commercial ships in international water throughout the Asia-Pacific region.”

Willard noted China’s rise as an economic and world power, and said he welcomes the role it can play as a regional partner.

“China is not our enemy,” he said. “We look forward to a constructive relationship with China, and their constructive contribution to the security of the Asia-Pacific region.”

Lauding progress toward transferring wartime operational control of South Korean troops to their own country in 2012, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates today called on the longtime U.S. ally to assume a larger security role on the Korean peninsula and beyond.

Gates told a gathering of about 150 U.S. and South Korean troops at Yongsan Garrison here that he’s impressed in strides the South Korean armed forces have made toward assuming the lead defense role in their national territory. These efforts, along with a bold modernization effort, have built a force he called “poised to lead the defense of your homeland and protect your nation’s security interests around the world.”

Gates called on South Korea’s political leaders to invest more in their country’s defense, at a level “appropriate to Korea’s emerging role as a contributor to global security, and commensurate with the threat you face on the peninsula.”

North Korea – the impetus for the long-term U.S. security commitment here – has become increasingly lethal and destabilizing, he said. Though North Korea still has the capacity, although degraded, to strike south of the demilitarized zone, he noted, that threat pales in comparison to current developments that “threaten not just the peninsula, but the Pacific Rim and international stability as well.”

“Today, it is North Korea’s pursuit of nuclear weapons and proliferation of nuclear know-how and ballistic missile weapons and parts that have focused our attention,” Gates told the audience. “We do not today, nor will we ever, accept a North Korea with nuclear weapons. We will work, as an alliance and with other allies and partners, for the complete and verifiable denuclearization of North Korea.”

Gates reiterated the U.S. commitment to using the “full range of American military might” to provide extended deterrence. This includes everything from the nuclear umbrella to conventional-strike and missile-defense capabilities, as well as the continued U.S. military presence in South Korea.

But meanwhile, he added, the U.S.-South Korean alliance needs to continue to evolve to stand up to mutual security commitments, including those beyond the Korean peninsula.

Gone are the days, Gates said, when South Korea deployed forces — in Vietnam and Iraq, for example — seemingly as a gesture for the United States.

“Going forward, Korea’s international military contributions should be seen as what they are: something that is done to benefit your own security and vital national interests,” he said. “The will and the ability of the Republic of Korea to act regionally and globally are entirely consistent with your obligation to lead the defense of this peninsula.”